This cache is located on a Lakes Region Conservation Trust (LRCT) property that was, in the late 19th/early 20th century the Trask family farm. By the 1940s, however, the property had passed out of the Trask family and the farm abandoned.
A developer consolidated most of the Trask property in the 1980s for a major housing project, and in the process, built acess roads to the planned house lots. Much of the current trail system is on these roadbeds but in the past 30 years they have been encroached upon by beech, small white pine and sweetfern. (The cellar hole of the Trask farmhouse is partially concealed by a berm made during road construction. It's located about midway on the main N-S red diamond trail.) A poor housing economy in the early 1990s killed the development project.
In 1995 the LRCT acquired the 183 acres of what is now the Trask Swamp and Fort Point Woods Conservation Area. (It is also the site of an archived cache Get Out and Explore! - Trask Side [GC2XRX8]. While this cache has been lost it is still worth taking the loop trail (blue diamond on the maps and marked "swamp view") to visit it. The swamp is home to -- among other wildlife -- a blue heron rookery, beaver and, on rare occasions, black bear.
The cache is in a forlorn family cemetery that dates back to one of the first families of East Alton. Sometime before 1800, Ebenezer French (1774-1824) bought several large parcels in this area. The souls interred here are from his second and third generation. (Ebenezer is buried up on Gilman's Corner Road near where he lived but on town maps the road into this property — now the trail from the kiosk off of Ft. Point Road — was for many decades called the Seth French Road.)
When the Trask family bought this farmland they honored the memory of their predecessors by keeping the French cemetery (although they didn't do much to keep it up.) The fact is that NH law prohibits the conveyance of a family cemetery in a land sale because family members have visiting rights to their ancestors' graves in perpetuity.
Which brings us to Bill French (Scroll down this camp Staff page to see Bill's bio.)
Since he was a camper at nearby Camp Kabeyun in the early 1950s and then as counselor, assistant camp director and member of the Board of The John and Anna Newton Porter Foundation that operates Kabeyun, Bill French has been coming back to these parts every summer to lead hikes and conduct historical tours of the area for campers. At least once each summer he takes a group to this LRCT tract and leads them to this hidden — and a bit spooky — spot where the boys are surprised — and a little bit weirded out — to discover the grave of William French. The logbook contains many entries by Kabeyun summer campers who have found this cache over the years.
We like to think that, while Bill French continues to inform, educate and entertain succeeding generations of Kabeyun campers on the natural and cultural history of this area, in this instance, he is also exercising his rights under NH law.
LRCT requests that visitors subscribe to the Leave No Trace principles of outdoor ethics. Please be respectful of the headstones which are fragile and could topple easily. The cache (now in a old ammo box; read the log) is not immediately near them but located a respectful distance from the interred. If you want a pointer, stand facing William French's headstone, say a prayer and press Decrypt.
Park in the area by the kiosk off of Ft. Point Road. A copy of the LRCT trail map at the kiosk is loaded in the Image Gallery should you want to print it out to take with you. There may be paper copies at the kiosk. You don’t have to bushwhack; follow the main trail but note the waypoint added to help you find the trail to the French family graveyard, which is not on the LRCT map.
The Trask Swamp and Fort Point Woods Conservation Area was acquired by donors to the Lakes Region Conservation Trust and the generosity of Juliet Peverly.